The Epstein Chronicles

Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse followed recurring patterns that appeared again and again across different victims, properties and periods of time. Survivors described being recruited through friends, acquaintances or other young women, often under the pretense of giving Epstein a massage for money. Those encounters would then escalate into sexual abuse, and some victims said they were encouraged or paid...

When Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in July 2019, much of the national media treated the story as a sudden scandal rather than the continuation of a case that had already been documented for years. There were important exceptions, most notably investigative reporting that had exposed the failures of the original Florida prosecution, but the broader press corps had largely failed to maintain sustaine...

Prince Andrew assembled a high-powered legal team to fight Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit, and reports at the time said some of the lawyers involved were charging as much as roughly £2,000 an hour. The legal battle was extraordinarily expensive, with Queen Elizabeth II reportedly helping cover Andrew’s mounting legal bills from her private funds. His attorneys aggressively tried to get the case...

Ken Starr, once known for his independent counsel’s investigation into President Bill Clinton, was later tied to Epstein in essentially the opposite role: legal defense. Starr joined Epstein’s defense team in 2007 just before Epstein’s widely criticized plea-deal in Florida. Starr was “in the room” when then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta negotiated the agreement that allowed Epstein to plead to l...

According to reporting based on Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers, Jeffrey Epstein privately described Prince Andrew as “an idiot, but—to him—a useful one,” because Andrew’s royal status gave Epstein access and legitimacy that money alone could not easily buy. Brown wrote that Epstein traveled with Andrew to foreign markets where governments and business leaders were effectively obliged to receive a...

In 1997, Jeffrey Epstein quietly became part-owner of a luxurious ski-in, ski-out Euro-style chalet in Vail, Colorado. The property—located at 375 Mill Creek Circle—was transferred to him via a trust he controlled, following an earlier purchase by an heiress of Johnson & Johnson, Elizabeth Ross “Libet” Johnson. This arrangement, formalized in 1998, granted Epstein significant control over the...

Day three of Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing focused largely on what happened after Robinson turned himself in following the killing of Charlie Kirk. Utah State Bureau of Investigation agent Brian Davis testified that he was sent to St. George after authorities learned that a man was preparing to surrender in connection with the shooting. Davis said Robinson arrived at the Washington County S...

Just days before his arrest for the University of Idaho murders, Bryan Kohberger wrote Washington State University asking to be reinstated as a teaching assistant after the school terminated him from the position. Kohberger had been notified on December 19, 2022 that he was losing his T.A. job in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology following complaints about his performance and conf...

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the Justice Department must expedite processing of most of Democracy Defenders Fund’s FOIA requests concerning Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files. DDF had sought records including Epstein and Maxwell investigative files mentioning Donald Trump or Mar-a-Lago, communications among senior DOJ officials such as Pam Bondi,...

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the Justice Department must expedite processing of most of Democracy Defenders Fund’s FOIA requests concerning Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files. DDF had sought records including Epstein and Maxwell investigative files mentioning Donald Trump or Mar-a-Lago, communications among senior DOJ officials such as Pam Bondi,...

Now that Congress has taken testimony from figures including Darren Indyke, Richard Kahn, Kathryn Ruemmler, Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff and Tova Noel, the real investigative work should be beginning, not ending. Their statements should be systematically compared against the contemporaneous record, including emails, financial documents, calendars, court filings, survivor accounts, prison records and...

Now that Congress has taken testimony from figures including Darren Indyke, Richard Kahn, Kathryn Ruemmler, Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff and Tova Noel, the real investigative work should be beginning, not ending. Their statements should be systematically compared against the contemporaneous record, including emails, financial documents, calendars, court filings, survivor accounts, prison records and...

Jane Doe 3 asked the federal court to allow her to continue using a pseudonym in her lawsuits against Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, including the related action in which they are sued as co-executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. She argued that publicly revealing her identity would expose her to additional trauma, unwanted attention and possible retaliation after coming forward with allegations...

Jeffrey Epstein built relationships with some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, moving comfortably among billionaires, financiers, politicians, royalty, academics and major business figures. His social and professional circles included people such as Les Wexner, Leon Black, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew and former political leaders, along with executives and investors whose wealth...

Prince Andrew publicly said after his disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview that he was willing to help any appropriate law-enforcement agency investigating Jeffrey Epstein, but U.S. prosecutors later said that cooperation never materialized. In January 2020, then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said Andrew had provided “zero cooperation” despite requests from the FBI and federal prosecutors to interv...

The Jeffrey Epstein scandal has drawn some of the most prominent attorneys in the country into its orbit, representing accusers, associates, institutions and defendants across decades of criminal and civil litigation. Lawyers such as Gloria Allred became closely associated with survivors seeking accountability and compensation, while attorneys including Bobbi Sternheim took on high-profile defense...

Jeffrey Epstein’s entanglement with Leon Black and Larry Summers runs through the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation and its flagship project, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), born out of the wreckage of the 2008 financial crisis. Black, the billionaire Apollo founder, bankrolled INET with roughly $25 million and installed himself as its chief patron, while Summers — fresh off his contro...

Les Wexner played a central role in Jeffrey Epstein’s rise, giving him access, credibility and financial authority that few other relationships could have provided. Epstein became deeply involved in Wexner’s finances in the 1980s and eventually received sweeping power of attorney over his affairs, an extraordinary level of trust for someone whose own financial background remained opaque. Wexner al...

Day two of Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing focused heavily on prosecutors’ effort to connect Robinson to the Utah Valley University campus and to the physical evidence recovered after Charlie Kirk was shot. Investigators introduced additional surveillance footage they said showed Robinson moving around UVU before and after the shooting, while the State also turned to forensic evidence recover...

Day two of Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing focused heavily on prosecutors’ effort to connect Robinson to the Utah Valley University campus and to the physical evidence recovered after Charlie Kirk was shot. Investigators introduced additional surveillance footage they said showed Robinson moving around UVU before and after the shooting, while the State also turned to forensic evidence recover...

Judge Paul Engelmayer rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s attempt to overturn her conviction and 20-year prison sentence, dismantling the arguments she raised in a sprawling petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Maxwell claimed that newly released Epstein-related records, alleged prosecutorial misconduct, false testimony and withheld evidence demonstrated that her trial had resulted in a miscarriage of justic...

Judge Paul Engelmayer rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s attempt to overturn her conviction and 20-year prison sentence, dismantling the arguments she raised in a sprawling petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Maxwell claimed that newly released Epstein-related records, alleged prosecutorial misconduct, false testimony and withheld evidence demonstrated that her trial had resulted in a miscarriage of justic...

The University of Maine System voted to strip former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s name from university programs and honors after renewed scrutiny of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The Board of Trustees voted 9-5, with one abstention, to remove Mitchell’s name from the George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and the George J. Mitchell Peace Scholarship. The d...

Norway’s parliament has opened public hearings into Jeffrey Epstein’s connections with Norwegian politicians and diplomats after newly released U.S. records exposed a wider web of relationships between Epstein and members of the country’s political and diplomatic elite. The parliament’s scrutiny and constitutional affairs committee has summoned 11 current and former foreign and development ministe...

A federal judge in Manhattan ruled that FirstBank Puerto Rico and its parent company, First BanCorp, must face most of a lawsuit accusing the bank of helping sustain Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation for more than two decades. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff rejected the bank’s effort to dismiss the central claim brought under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, allowing survivor Juli...